Apparently Some Circles Do End (Cheating In America : Part Two)

I recently watched the film "Waitress." It's marketed as a cute, quirky romantic comedy which centers around a young waitress at a roadside cafe who dreams of bigger things than her small-town life is giving her. I remember it getting good reviews when it came out, so when my wife sent me to Blockbuster with the request of bringing home something light-hearted and funny, "Waitress" seemed to fit the bill. We were both a little disappointed by what we ended up with.

Though the movie does have its redeeming qualities, a central story line of the film is about the main character having an affair on her loser husband. What makes it worse is that she's pregnant. Kick it up a notch and she's sleeping with her doctor, the very OBGYN who's checking her regularly during her pregnancy. There are numerous scenes of them all over each other... in his front yard, in the car, in the patient room in one of his offices. And though you don't actually see anything beyond heavy kissing, the main character actually narrates the line "At first it was about the sex." What the?!? I'm sorry. Am I a total prude or is that ridiculously immoral and disgusting on several levels? On top of that, there's even another character cheating on her husband in the story too. What bothers me is how the whole thing is presented. I think we're actually supposed to cheer on the adultery. We're supposed to be happy for this girl as she's banging one guy while pregnant with another's baby. Sadly, this seems to be a trend in Hollywood these days.

Think of some recent films and think of how many times you've wanted two married characters to cheat on their respective spouses in order to be together. "Walk the Line" was a great film about the life and romance of Johnny Cash and June Carter. It was a great love story, but both characters were married. Both characters had children. Both cheated, both lied, both wrecked lives and families in the process. You could argue that Johnny and June were "meant to be" and that after they got together, they stayed together until the day they died. Fine, but the bottom line is that they broke their marriage vows along the way and I had a hard time really wanting them to be together in the movie because I knew what it meant to be cheering on their relationship. And did I mention the Academy Awards that this film was either nominated for or won?

Currently in theatres is "Charlie Wilson's War," another movie where you want the two main stars to be together, and yet both character are also married. And again, this film has been nominated for multiple Golden Globe awards and will certainly be in line for several Oscars too. If all Hollywood does is glamorize cheating, why should any of us be surprised when it happens in our own lives or when family values as a whole seem to be falling by the wayside?

I wrote in a previous post about how I thought that the steroid scandal in baseball was sadly reflective of not a problem in that sport alone, but a declining sense of morals in our nation as a whole. Some may call that an over-statement, but I just don't see otherwise anymore. You constantly read of marriages breaking up, of single-parents raising children alone, and of kids falling apart. The family structure that should be so essential in our lives today has been replaced by too many other me-first negative forces. It was once said that "no man is an island," and yet no one seems very interested in doing the things to promote togetherness very much any more.

I go to bed every night knowing that I've never cheated on my wife and knowing that the day will never come where I'll look my children in the eyes and say, "Boys... the reason your mom and I aren't living together any more is because I just wanted to bang some other lady... that pussy was more important than you." Am I a hero, or just some dope whose story isn't worth telling?

F*ck Baseball ! (Cheating in America : Part One)

Earlier this week the official investigative reports on the steroid scandal in Major League Baseball were released to the public. Many were surprised to see big names like Roger Clemens, Eric Gagne, and Miguel Tejada on the list of guilty players. Questions and speculation are everywhere. What do we do now?

Honestly, I'm so disgusted by all of this I don't really know where to start. Sure, we've all known that steroids have been involved in sports. You can't look at Barry Bonds now or Mark McGuire or Sammy Sosa from a few years back and not think they were on something. I guess seeing it in official writing though makes it alarmingly and painfully true.

What bothers me the most is this culture of ours that possibly created this dilemma. We want everything fast. Working for things takes too long. We live in an incredibly speedy, virtually instantaneous society. Working endlessly in the gym is simply not fast enough for most athletes... or they've been made to believe that. We're also in an age of statistics. Anything of value, apparently, is only relevant if it's measurable. The more numbers, graphs, and esoteric data - the better. No one can tell how hard you've worked at something. They can only pat you on the back when some numbers show your significance. It also seems like we're in a culture of cheating, one where liars and acts of dishonesty frequently go unpunished, even when it's so painfully obvious that a major wrong has been done.

Where does baseball go from here? I have no idea. I'm fond of saying that since we don't live in a perfect world, there are no perfect solutions. What I am sure of is that baseball is probably just reflective of a much bigger concern: How far does our American culture have to fall down before someone realizes that not only are we headed in the wrong direction, but that our flimsy ideals most likely sent us this way in the first place.

The Art of the Performance

I got to see Bright Eyes in concert the other night. Conor Oberst and company put on a fantastic show and I was not disappointed in my first time seeing them. Oberst, who has often been referred to as “the new Bob Dylan” in regards to his song-writing, was entertaining, emotional, humorous, aggressive, and intense all at once. He is a dynamic performer who seemed fragile in his most intimate songs, but was later a powerhouse in the ear-blasting finale. It was a great show.

There was one thing that really struck me about that night, and that is the nature of performers and their performances. Here you have guys who sing the same songs night after night, hundreds of shows a year. For some artists, they’ve belted out the same tunes tens of thousands of times. Doesn’t that get old? And yet somehow, each night some of these people are able to reach down into themselves and pull out all of the appropriate emotions when needed. It kind of amazes me.

When Bright Eyes performed “Poison Oak,” I was blown away. I’ll reprint the lyrics below, but the song seems to be about one friend losing another. They start off as boyhood pals, but then one quickly grows up, steals a car, drives away and gets into some bad stuff. The speaker sings of loss and how his clothes are “soaking wet” with tears. Every time I’ve heard the song on the album “I’m Wide Awake It’s Morning,” it’s always gotten to me. It’s starts off very quietly and intimately, but then it swells with anger, sadness, and regret. It’s a tune that sounds like Oberst might’ve easily cried through the vocals or through the writing of it. I practically do for the emotional chord he strikes through every lyric, especially when the band hits the crescendos of the later lines.

It’s probably a mistake to assume that Oberst is singing about someone from his life. We probably too often guess that of writers, which diminishes their ability in some way. But let’s just say that this is something very real to him. I can understand how Eric Clapton might’ve barely been able to get through the recording of “Tears in Heaven,” but does it still get to him now after performing the song for over fifteen years? You wouldn’t think so, or at least not in the same way, and yet when Conor Oberst sang “Poison Oak” when I saw him, you would’ve thought he was speaking of something that just happened to him yesterday, even though the song was recorded several years and many many concerts ago. The emotion he conjured up for the performance of that song was almost tangible that night at Constitution Hall. I give him a lot of credit for that and admire any artist who is able to deliver such passionate renditions of their songs night after night.

“Poison Oak” Lyrics by Conor Oberst

Poison oak. Some boyhood bravery.
When the telephone was a tin can on a string,
And I fell asleep with you still talking to me.
You said you weren't afraid to die.

In polaroids you were dressed in women's clothes.
Were you made ashamed, why'd you lock them in a drawer?
Well, I don't think that I ever loved you more,

Than when you turned away, when you slammed the door,
When you stole the car and drove towards Mexico.
And you wrote bad checks just to fill your arm,
I was young enough, I still believed in war.

Well let the poets cry themselves to sleep
And all their tearful words will turn back into steam.

But me, I'm a single cell on the serpent's tongue.
There's a muddy field where a garden was.
And I'm glad you got away but I'm still stuck out here.
My clothes are soaking wet from your brother's tears.

And I never thought this life was possible.
You're the yellow bird that I've been waiting for.

The end of paralysis, I was a statuette.
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed.
The sound of loneliness makes me happier.